In the interests of adding 'usable' flavour and variety to monk builds.

I was not aware that there was such a shortage. I can think of many different ways of creating a dexterity, a wisdom, a strength, and even a constitution based monk that use the weapons themed to a 'monk' in third edition Dungeons and Dragons. Some are more powerful than others, while others are easier to level, and so forth.

electric mayhem wrote:

Would it be possible, and appropriate, to create a feat, or modify Intuitive attack, to add a Monk's wisdom bonus to their damage when wielding a quarterstaff?

Possible? Probably. Appropriate? I am not so sure about it...

In a way you are suggesting a feat that would add a Monk's wisdom modifier on top of the base strength modifier as extra damage. In otherwords what you are suggesting is a 'Crossbow Sniper' feat for quarterstaves, a weapon that already gets three additional highest BAB attacks with Greater Flurry of Blows. Not to mention that wisdom opens the path for additional AC, and Blazing Aura for unresisted fire damage.

So how about we imagine that Monk 20/Divine Champion 10 build using either Aasimar, or better yet, Grey Orc as the race. You know, reaching 23 wisdom for Blazing Aura is not difficult with a +2 wisdom race, and with those four Divine Champion feats spent on Great Wisdom. This allows our quarterstaff using monk to freely invest in his strength ability score, which gets the '1.5' multiplier. Throw in Northlander Hewing, and we have the following build:

You will get 5 attacks per round, 6 if you apply haste. Turn off Northlander Hewing and your damage is: 35~ a hit, and you get 8-9 hits per round.

Oh, and you have Expose Weakness too. Oh, and you can increase the damage higher, by making use of a Potion of Bull's Strength or +4 item. You have the extra spare epic feat for that. Additionally you could leave out Expose Weakness. Oh, as a monk you also have free Improved Knockdown.

electric mayhem wrote:

But not apply when using fists (they already get enough damage on fists).

Currently, there is nothing wrong with the damage output of a Monk 11/Weapon Master 7/Fighter 12. Not to mention that you can spare the feat for Northlander Hewing which helps a ton against critical hit immunities.

electric mayhem wrote:

Currently monks base dmg @ lvl 30 using fists is a 3d10 (up to 30).If using a staff it is 2d4 (up to 8).

At monk level 30, and there are many reasons why a monk might not have all 30 levels, which decreases the damage output. The quarterstaff also has that increased strength modifier damage going on for itself, and it is easier to purchase a decent quarterstaff than it is to find a nice pair of gloves or gauntlets.

electric mayhem wrote:

All bonuses above this base damage is equally in play and available to both Fists and Staff users.i.e. +4 EB and 1d4 Elemental on Gloves (Fists) is equally available on Staves too.

Northlander Hewing, so to speak, doesn't work properly on critical hits. The extra damage is not multiplied, the damage dices are not maximised, and therefore it is possible for a fist user to roll incredibly low and therefore deal less damage on critical hit than with a regular hit. With a staff, this problem is far less evident.

But as for actual item properties, I recall the quarterstaves having a far larger pool of additional properties.

electric mayhem wrote:

Also note that fisters get the Adamantium feat to bypass DR. Whereas stave users do not. I'm not advocating for this to change though.

Quarterstaves have access to Cold Iron and Alchemical Silver.

electric mayhem wrote:

My argument is that mechanically in this game, monks (players) will seldom ever be primarily staff wielders due to the large handicap they are encumbered with by comparison.

Let us imagine a human monk with base strength of 10. That character is better off using a quarterstaff over unarmed attacks until monk level of 8. At level 8, our monk has 1d10 unarmed damage dice and that is 5.5~ damage on avarage. It is 0.5~ higher than the average damage of a 2d4 quarterstaff.

Should we increase the base strength modifier, then the superiority of the quarterstaff lingers far deeper into the monk level progression. Now, while unarmed damage will always come on top in the long run, it is not by default the best choice.

For example: A level 30 monk with 30 strength and 3d10 unarmed damage will deal: 26.5~ damage per avarage hit.

While the above level 30 monk with his 30 strength and 2d4 quarterstaff would deal:20~ damage per avarage hit.

Thus on avarage, the unarmed strike has +6.5~ damage to the quarterstaff even on a high strength build. However, while Adamantine fists are lovely in PvP, a Cold Iron or an Alchemical Silver quarterstaff can actually end up dealing more damage in PvE.

electric mayhem wrote:

In the interests of variety, could we look at improving the option for staff wielding monks please?

Now, I am not entirely convinced that there is need to increase monk build variety, as you can make many dexterity, strength, wisdom, or constitution based monk builds that make use of the D&D monk weapons. Oh, as for the the constitution based monk, Monk 11/Fist of the Forest 3/Fighter 12/Anointed Knight 4. You know, Fighter's Weapon Focus feats along side with higher BAB progressions allows you to reach the typical 'pure monk AB' - while you got some DR and/or Fast Healing, and HP pool that allows soaking damage.

But anyhow... should these staff wielding monks be buffed up in one way or another, I just do not think giving wisdom modifier to damage is the right idea or way to do it. I think a better way to do it would be boost 'strength based monks' in general. Whenever people talk of strength based monks, they do complain about the AC. Thus there could be a feat that allows a strength based monk to convert a portion of their strength modifier into AC bonus.

For example: For every 5 levels in the monk class, you are allowed to gain additiona point of AC, but not more than half your strength modifier.

Thus: A level 5 monk with 18 strength would get +1 AC,A level 10 monk with 18 strength would get +2 AC,A level 15 monk with 18 strength would get +2 AC.

How would that sound to you? You would need 30 monk levels and 34 strength to get full +6 to AC.

The simple explantion for the feat would be that your well trained muscles make you generally sturdier, or whatever.

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" I have nothing positive to say about the elves of the Sword Coast... "

While intensive a reponse, and apparently well researched. So thankyou Sun.

Once again. People miss the mark.

This is about trying to support a basic Wis build. People that invest in Wis instead of STR on their builds aren't going to benefit from the STR benefits that everyone keeps boasting about.

Powerbuilders are going to powerbuild regardless of what you have in place for any class/race/feat etc yada so on and so forth. Why do we keep throwing up this defense against good ideas, of protecting the server from powerbuilders? When there are so many of them here that publicly boast about their knowledge of how to do it and are playing these in game anyway? Server hasn't imploded from them yet?

This is about trying to support a build line of monks that doesn't stretch the RP-ability of the character.A basic wis priority ability monk. One that through years of training would know how to do more damage with a stick (much like they do with their fists) and not have to rely on brute force.

I'll be the first to admit. This idea does sound like a "I want my Cake and want to eat it too" request.

Do the fisters not already get this and more? Did I hear correctly that NLH works for fisters? I imagine they don't get the 1.5x str, only 1x?Also, not every build wants to use a Northern Iceman Axe hewing feat. Plenty of other feats to choose from.Are you able to do up the maths to represent that for us for comparison please?

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Quote:

I could imagine a new Feat like Combat Insight, where for Staffs, Wisdom REPLACES Strength when using a Staff.

This way the "change" proposed wouldn't affect existing builds (by upping their power),

I suppose you could cross-class into UMD and use Shield Wand for +4 AC, but it doesn't change the fact that for a large part of this monk's career, the AC might feel way too low.

And I did not mention this previously. But a fist based monk needs that gauntlet/glove slot for +4 Enchantment Bonus. A quarterstaff using monk can use it for something else. For example he could wield those +4 Dexterity bracers, or +4 AC bracers that in turn frees their chest slot for something else.

As for:

Steve wrote:

I could imagine a new Feat like Combat Insight, where for Staffs, Wisdom REPLACES Strength when using a Staff.

It would be superior to what an unarmed monk with a similar build can achieve, with or without Northlander Hewing. Northlander Hewing reduces number of attacks per round, alonside the -2 to AB and AC, thus our quarterstaff monk could just leave Greater Flurry of Blows active and pile on the damage. While being able to use Cold Iron and Alchemical Silver quarterstaff when needed, and having that glove slot for something more beneficial.

Edit:I think it would just replace wisdom based unarmed monks with quarterstaff based monks.

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" I have nothing positive to say about the elves of the Sword Coast... "

A Combat Insight-like feat would also require Combat Expertise, for example. So burn up 2 Feats in order to apply WIS over STR to qstaff.

Additionally, using a qstaff doesn't allow for Stunning, unless you go for Willow Strike Feat as well, which is another 2 Feats burned up. AND, might i just sneak in that Willow Strike cancels your attacks, so best to use at the end of a round, and with lower AB. So if you miss, you not only burn up a Stunning attack use, but also your attacks that round.

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